Are floating gondolas the better alternative to rolling trains?
Created: 06/22/2022, 06:00
By: Peter Borchers
The Ottobahn as an alternative to the S-Bahn extension?
Climate activist Heinz Wensauer could imagine that.
© Ottobahn GmbH
The idea is not new, but it is charming: Heinz Wensauer from Wolfratshausen brings the innovative Ottobahn into play as an alternative to the S-Bahn extension.
Wolfratshausen/Geretsried
– The Bolivian metropolis of La Paz has them, Mexico City and the Colombian city of Medellin too, and gondolas also circle through the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
They don't do it to cart tourists to peaks.
In South America in particular, cable cars are now the means of choice for local public transport to relieve the burden on cities of over a million inhabitants, which are suffocating in car traffic and exhaust fumes.
Heinz Wensauer Wolfratshauser, who is committed to environmental policy, considers the S-Bahn extension to be a big mistake.
© Hans Lippert
Heinz Wensauer sympathizes with this means of transport.
If the 80-year-old Wolfratshauser has his way, commuters from the train station in his hometown will in future float in gondolas to Geretsried instead of taking the S-Bahn: "This prevents surface damage and saves agriculture, which is becoming increasingly important in these difficult times." Next Monday, Wensauer will travel by train with a dozen interested parties to the mobility start-up Ottobahn GmbH in Munich-Obersendling (see box) to take a look at its system.
In addition to some of the farmers affected by the planned S-Bahn extension, the passengers may be joined by representatives of the Bund Naturschutz and the district office.
The idea of closing the public transport gap in the middle center with a cable car instead of trains is not new.
Exactly 20 years ago, the former Wolfratshausen city councilor Hans Reiser put it on the table of his puzzled fellow committee members during a meeting.
The former sporting goods retailer said at the time that there would be “not a meter” on the planned, almost ten-kilometer-long S-Bahn route that was not controversial.
According to a report in our newspaper, Reiser cited “a major construction site every 500 meters”, the long construction period and the traffic obstructions that would primarily affect Wolfratshausen – and referred to an “alternative transport concept” that “the people of Geretsried -Süd, Geretsried Mitte, Waldram and Gelting quickly and easily to the existing S-Bahn station in Wolfratshausen".
He had seen it before in Hanover: the cable car, with which one could cross the Expo site, impressed him.
It is cheaper, quieter, requires little space and can be used very flexibly.
His arguments didn't help the visionary.
On the contrary: Reiser was often ridiculed for his idea.
Instead, the decision was made to build new rails on which the S7, that was the goal, should run from 2028.
In 2002, Hans Reiser, the former Wolfratshausen city councilor, put a gondola solution up for discussion for the first time.
© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss
The planning approval procedure was initiated in December 2011.
The intention was that the level crossing on the Sauerlacher Straße traffic axis in Wolfratshausen should remain.
But the Wolfratshauser put themselves across.
They only wanted the S-Bahn to be extended by lowering the tracks in this area - which drives up the price enormously.
At the end of 2021, the cost estimate was almost 170 million euros - plus 44 million euros for a tunnel/trough construction in the Sauerlacher Straße area.
The number is now likely to be significantly higher.
Today it is extremely unlikely that construction will start in 2024 and that the first train will roll to Geretsried four years later.
The planning is too complex, and the number of objections – around 800 – from representatives of public affairs and local residents is too great.
Also read: Geretsried: Does the S-Bahn extension pay off?
Heinz Wensauer would prefer the S-Bahn not to run at all.
The committed and polarizing climate and environmental protection activist repeatedly expresses his opinion at various political round tables - and he knows that he often gets on the nerves of local politicians.
Wensauer is "not in principle" against the S-Bahn.
"What we have in stock is absolutely fine." Only as a small distributor from the terminal stations does he see "new transport concepts as having a clear advantage".
A few weeks ago, he “looked at the Ottobahn”, even took a ride and thinks it is “a convincing alternative” – better than buses, although he quite likes to travel with them himself.
"But the longer the walk to bus stops, the less acceptance there is."
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Ottobahn Managing Director Marc Schindler in a gondola at the company headquarters in Munich-Obersendling.
© Claus Schunk
The 80-year-old is particularly bothered by the surface damage on the planned S-Bahn route.
He had a film (“The Cuckoo Train”) made with the landowners about it.
"Cuckoo Railway" because Geretsried "lays this unwanted egg in the nest like a cuckoo" in the neighboring communities.
According to Wensauer, the city is primarily concerned with creating building land around the train stations and promoting urban development - with what he sees as dire consequences: "Soil sealing, loss of agriculture, negative effects on the climate, higher rents, higher living costs due to growth ."
Always just growth, growth - we can't go on as if nothing happened.
Heinz Wensauer
The Wolfratshauser is now bringing the gondola variant back into the conversation because it is possibly the "more sustainable, cheaper and easier to build alternative".
"I just wish that people would think ahead, also in politics." Because one thing is clear to the 80-year-old in view of the ongoing global warming: "It's always growth, growth - we can't go on as if nothing happened."
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